


Beneath Your Feet

by AdamantEve



Series: If Stories Wrote Themselves [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief, Missing Moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 23:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21107531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantEve/pseuds/AdamantEve
Summary: Grief is a complicated thing.





	Beneath Your Feet

**Author's Note:**

> A little drabble I posted on [Tumblr](https://writeradamanteve.tumblr.com/post/188254483072/beneath-her-feet) to come to terms with Betty's lonely graveyard visit on 4x01

This would always be a lonely endeavor.

She wouldn’t have it any other way.

After the last of the Fred Andrews’s mourners climbed into their vehicles and drifted away, Betty told Jughead to sit with Archie on the ride home and that she’d drive the truck back.

He nodded and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you at home.”

Her watery smile was filled with gratitude, and as they left, preoccupied in Mary and Archie’s grief, she quietly walked the quarter mile to another grave, shaded by trees and surrounded by nondescript names.

She could see the trash from afar already. She could barely see “Harold Cooper” over the spray-painted “The Black Hood burns in Hell.” There were some other stains on the gravestone, too.

No doubt, a few had endeavored to piss on his grave.

She took a deep breath, quieting the dull ache in her chest. Hal deserved to be reviled. He was a murderer. He terrorized the town. He terrorized _her_. He didn’t deserve to be mourned by his daughter, and yet here she was, kicking aside the refuse and standing at his gravesite, the only one in the world who could remember a time that he was anything but a monster.

She supposed she should’ve obliterated these memories, seeing as they were probably tainted by his need to construct his perfect life. Perhaps they were, to him, methods of indoctrination and control. But it wasn’t easy to rid herself of the emotions that came of those supposedly calculated moments.

She had felt love and happiness, and she had believed it was because her father actually cared for her with his whole being.

When he taught her how to fix cars, she just believed he wanted to share a part of himself with her.

When he encouraged her to revive the Blue & Gold, she had seen it as him believing in her dreams.

The Hal Cooper she had know was so different from the Black Hood that it was difficult to combine the two.

Yet she told herself, too, that he was a monster. They had buried a monster. And truly, the same town that gave Fred Andrews a hero’s coming home was well within their rights to piss on a serial killer’s grave.

If she wanted to visit that same grave and stand over it, not to mourn the Black Hood but to mourn the memories that were now as tainted as his gravestone, then that’s her business and hers alone.

This would always be a lonely errand. She didn’t have to explain it to anyone.

_Well_.

_Maybe your therapist._

She sighed. “Ugh.”

It felt stupid to say a prayer, so she didn’t. It also felt like a betrayal to Fred to leave him flowers when just 30 minutes ago, she was putting a rose on the coffin of a hero, a beloved man who was the embodiment of all things good.

She may never bring flowers to Hal’s grave.

A candle? Maybe not even.

Hal didn’t deserve to be left anything.

The next time she visits, and she knows there will be a next time, she’ll bring a trash bag and clear away the refuse—at the very least out of respect for the surrounding graves.

She nodded to herself, glad that she had a plan.

_That would have to be enough._

She headed back to the truck, and as she rounded the corner, she was surprised to find Jughead leaning against the passenger side door.

She felt her face flaming, her stomach tightening.

Her lips pressed to a thin line for a second. “I thought you were going home with Archie.”

He shrugged. “Veronica was there, in addition to Mary. It felt crowded. Are you ready to head home?”

She eyed him, a second of wariness overtaking her. Was he really not going to ask where she went?

His neutral expression softened. “I can go with you next time, Betts. You didn’t have to do that alone.”

_Dammit_.

Her eyes watered and she swiped furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It doesn’t feel right, actually. I should just forget and never come back, but I will come back, and you don’t have to suffer that.”

He expelled a deep breath. “I’m not suffering anything. I mean, if you want company next time, you can always ask me. I swear, I won’t tell anyone. We don’t even have to talk about it, unless you want to. It’s just you and me, walking across the graveyard.”

She swallowed, considering.

Maybe.

Perhaps.

“We always did have the weirdest dates,” she finally said.

He arched an eyebrow and she could tell he was stifling the tilt of his lips. “Oh, you know… I’m weird. I’m a weirdo.”

She loved this man.

He held the truck’s door open for her.

She touched his arm, a delicate caress, before she hopped into the truck so he could drive her home.


End file.
